


Just like honey.

by orange_crushed



Series: Today, your barista 'verse [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Family Issues, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1890273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dean," Cas says. His hand is still flat against Dean's heart. "I've been- will you do something for me?"</p>
<p>"Sure," Dean says. He doesn't even have to think about it. Cas's eyes are starring over, gleaming at the edges with the faintest track of unshed tears, even though he's smiling again. Dean's never actually seen him cry: happy, stubborn, tireless Castiel and his bees and guacamole and perfect coffee and perpetually bare feet, Cas, Dean's hardy dandelion blooming in the middle of the sidewalk. Dean would do literally anything he asked right now, jump off a cliff or ford a river, hand to hand combat with a mountain lion, an eight-course dinner with all Cas's jerkoff fundamentalist relatives. Dean would learn Esperanto or become a bonds trader, whatever the fuck that is. Dean would die for him. Dean would do it smiling. </p>
<p>"Marry me," Cas says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just like honey.

Dean's been hiding behind a novel for the last twenty minutes or so, but that's only a defense against Sunday strolling strangers who just want to make conversation instead of actually buying something. It's no protection against the grinning Kodiak bear in a baseball cap that is his baby brother. He spots Sam about five seconds before Sam spots him, and in that time Dean briefly has the thought that maybe this is just his karma, the universe's revenge for all those occasions on which he told Sam the farmer's market was for hippie hipster crumpet-eating babies who didn't like a little pesticide with their apples, who couldn't handle a little plastic around their bologna or sawdust in their hot dogs. Sam has a full shopping bag- reusable, eco-friendly, some kind of fucking owl screen-printed on the side- and a smile that tells Dean today one of them is a fisherman and the other is a lobster in a trap.

"Wow," Sam says. He towers over Dean, because Dean is scrunched down in a broken camp chair with a missing arm, trying to pretend he's a potted plant. "Cas told me you'd be here. But this is perfect."

" _You're_ perfect," Dean says, reflexively, and then realizes that's less than cutting. 

"How's business today?"

"Booming," Dean says. "Go away." 

"No," says Sam. He picks up a tiny jar in one enormous hand and peers at the label. "Look at that. Lavender rosemary." He looks at Dean and for a second, it's like he has a miniature seizure, trying to keep a straight face. In a totally calm voice he asks, "Do you recommend a cheese pairing?" He's ready for when Dean throws the paperback at his face and tells him to get the fuck out of his booth. "This isn't your booth," Sam says, gleefully. "It's Cas's booth. I bet _he_ could recommend a cheese pairing."

"Fuck's sake," says Dean. Right about then Jess comes up behind Sam, tugging a second shopping bag spilling over with green things: leaves, stems, stuff. Dean refrains from calling it horse food, because if Cas overhears him- or if Sam tattles- then he's gonna be getting kale salads at home for a month, topped with craisins and walnuts and Dean's existential meat-related despair. "Hey Jess," he says, instead. He looks at Sam. "Not gonna carry her bag, big strapping yeti like you?"

"I can handle it fine," Jess says. She leans down and gives Dean a peck on the cheek, smiling. "How's the honey business?"

"Pretty good," he says. "Got a contract with the bakery now. Cas is over there delivering the first batch." He glances down at the crates stacked under the table. "Should've been back already. I'm almost out of the stuff I brought today."

"Well, then I gotta get some before it's gone," Jess says, and pulls her wallet out of her string bag. Dean shakes his head and tries to get her to take a jar free, the you're-basically-family discount, but Jess pats his hand and tells him she's supporting a local entrepreneur and voting with her dollar, she's glad to pay, and when that doesn't work, she waves a five-dollar bill in his face and says, "Take the damn money, Dean."

"Yes ma'am," he says, and stuffs it into the change box. Jess smiles triumphantly and snags the last jar of the blueberry honey. "That one's real good on an english muffin," Dean says. He looks pointedly at Sam. "Or with some fresh goat cheese. Maybe even a Stilton."

"Ooh," says Jess. Sam stares at him. _Eat it_ , Dean mouths back, silently. Oh yeah. He is the king of the farmer's market.

 

 

 

 

Cas doesn't come back to the market after all: instead Dean gets a text message that says, _sorry can you handle it?_ Dean tells him it's no problem, it's close to one already and most folks are talking about packing up. He doesn't think anything of it until he turns down onto the long driveway to the trailer and sees a dark shape in the shade of the shabby awning. It's Cas, sprawled in one of the big wooden Adirondack chairs with his feet up on one of the plastic barrels he keeps around for rainwater, motionless. Dean parks on the gravel and gets out of the car and Cas waves at him briefly, bonelessly, with one hand. There's a beer in the other hand, and a soft-sided cooler on the ground by his chair.

"Day drinking," Dean says. "Okay." He flops into the other chair and sticks his hand into the cooler, relishes the tiny gust of colder air and the feeling of half-melted ice against overheated skin. He plucks a can from the six-pack ring and cracks it open, takes a drink. "I've been ditched for worse reasons." 

"I meant to come back," Cas says. "I'm sorry." He sounds sorry. He doesn't say anything else. Dean drinks slowly and watches him for a while. Cas doesn't move, except to scratch idly at a mosquito bite on his knee. He smiled at Dean when Dean first sat down, but now he's a million miles away on planet zonko, worried about some shit he obviously doesn't feel like sharing. But hey, that's basically against the rules. Cas's own totally unofficial and actually pretty sensible rules about good communication. If Dean can't be a miserable little clam shell about his bad feelings forever, or at least until somebody snaps and starts hollering, then nobody else can either. Dean takes another swig and leans over in his chair, rests his head against the back and looks at Cas. "Something wrong?" Cas's head turns around very slowly, until his eyes land on Dean and actually focus on him, coming back from the stratosphere.

"No," he says. He smiles but it's not the real good one, the one that Dean likes, where his eyes go all crinkly. It's too strained. Hey, realistically, they're all gorgeous; but this one's sort of sad. "Nothing important."

"Bullshit," Dean says, gently. "Come on. The bakery thing went okay, right?"

"Yeah," Cas says. He perks up a tiny bit. "They were very pleased."

"Of course they were," Dean says. "You make good shit."

"The bees make good shit."

"Take some credit," Dean says. "You're basically a bee." Cas's eyes narrow down, hilariously. "Don't make that face. I've seen you eat clover flowers. You hum. You have that ugly yellow shirt with the stripes. You're like their gigantic bee god." Cas laughs and pushes the arm of his chair away, rocks Dean's beer so that it splashes over a little bit, and Dean feels warm inside like he just won something. "Their shoving, beer-spilling bee god," he says. Cas gets up out of his chair and comes over to Dean's, puts his knees out on either side of Dean's lap and sits himself down onto the tops of Dean's thighs, while Dean protests and tries to push him off, wriggle away, complain about Cas's bony kneecaps digging into Dean's sides. Cas squishes him serenely and rubs his face into Dean's neck and Dean's token protests start to sound like something else. But instead of trying to get a hand inside his shorts, Cas just puts his palms on both sides of Dean's face, cups his cheekbones gently and kisses the slope of them, the tops of his face where the freckles are spilling over, the corner of his laughing mouth. He kisses Dean and says against his temple, wonderingly,

"You're the best thing."

"Shut up," Dean says, weakly. Christ, he can feel his face going red. Cas can suddenly go down on him in that horrible Jeep and Dean can keep a mostly straight face cruising the county highway, apparently, but he'll never get used to this stuff, the kindness, the kindness that Cas just doles out to him in big handfuls, like he'll never run out of it, like he could never give Dean enough. "Knee me in the spine and then you sweet talk me," he murmurs, but his hands are slipping under Cas's shirt, holding him there, warm and solid and good, all Dean's, Dean's dream and Dean's anchor, the center of the whole world. Dean turns his face to kiss the palm against his cheek. He can't stand to think that there is something wrong with Cas that he can't fix, and doesn't even know about. "Cas," he says, softly. "What's going on?"

Cas sighs and leans forward until Dean hears the gentle thunk of his forehead touching down on the back of the Adirondack chair. His arms slip down to Dean's sides and his hands curl up over Dean's chest. Dean holds him.

"My father is dead," he says.

"Jesus _Christ_ ," says Dean. "Cas."

"It's perfectly fine," Cas says, nonsensically. "It's fine. I think I hated him." He laughs a little thinly. "He probably hated me, too."

"Nobody could hate you," Dean says. He means it, to the bone. Dean pulls him in tighter and pets the fine hairs straggling out of his haircut at the ends. It's getting longer again. Dean can curl it around his fingers, the thick strands that grow sideways and up and across like a thicket, a nest for robin's eggs. He loves to wash that hair in the shower, tug on it, stick his nose into it when they're going to sleep and Cas's back is pressed to his chest, his arms slack and his ankles tangled with Dean's. Seriously, fuck anybody that can't appreciate him. But he doesn't say that out loud. Dean, of all people, knows family is family, sometimes, even when they're also complete trash bags. "I'm sorry," he says, instead. 

"Thank you," says Cas.

"Is there, uh," Dean says, "a funeral?"

"It's already over," Cas says. "I wasn't invited."

"Fuck," Dean says. "Fuck them. I'm sorry, but fuck them, Cas." He feels a swell of rage like a tiny wave, rolling ice-cold saltwater across his heart. "What the fuck. Your fucking shitty family. I'm sorry," he says again. He can't help himself. "I know you don't- but come on, those fucking holy rollers can't even invite you to a fucking funeral. Assholes."

"I'm not disagreeing," Cas says, and sits back up. He looks at Dean and Dean sees it now, the sadness hanging heavy under his eyes. Dean wants to strangle every last fucking one of them. Cas smiles at him like he can see Dean's murder thoughts and isn't judging him too harshly. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Sure." Dean thinks for a second. "You want to start a fire?"

"Where?" he asks, mouth turning up. Dean swats at his arm. 

"Like, for dinner. I'm not an arsonist. I could go get those kielbasa you like. Grill up some peppers, too."

"Keep talking."

"A pie from Milly's. Uh, some of those good rolls." He grins. "Pack of sparklers from the gas station? Water balloons?"

"Dean," Cas says. His hand is still flat against Dean's heart. "I've been- will you do something for me?"

"Sure," Dean says. He doesn't even have to think about it. Cas's eyes are starring over, gleaming at the edges with the faintest track of unshed tears, even though he's smiling again. Dean's never actually seen him cry: happy, stubborn, tireless Castiel and his bees and guacamole and perfect coffee and perpetually bare feet, Cas, Dean's hardy dandelion blooming in the middle of the sidewalk. Dean would do literally anything he asked right now, jump off a cliff or ford a river, hand to hand combat with a mountain lion, an eight-course dinner with all Cas's jerkoff fundamentalist relatives. Dean would learn Esperanto or become a bonds trader, whatever the fuck that is. Dean would die for him. Dean would do it smiling. 

"Marry me," Cas says.

"Yeah, okay," Dean says, and squirms uncomfortably in his chair and kisses Cas and then pushes him off his lap, laughing, and they pile into that fucking Jeep and drive back into town, to the butcher's and the bakery, to the gas station, a stop at Dean's house for another bag of charcoal and the grilling tongs Dean's so goddamn obsessed with. "They have better grip than yours," Dean demonstrates, pinching his own finger between the ends. "They're way more efficient." Cas makes a squinty, irritated face like Dean is trying to explain fucking atomic fusion or the plot of a Charlie Kaufman movie. Dean rolls his eyes to the ceiling. "Silicone. Little grabby things. They don't rip the hamburgers in half. We don't have to live like cavemen, Jesus." They drive back and Dean gets the fire started and Cas cuts up the peppers and onions and turns the boombox on, playing some weird shit with tambourines that Dean only admits to liking when they're alone. They eat dinner with tin plates on their knees and drink the rest of the beer and then some other, warmer beers, and after dark Dean lights the sparklers out of the fire ring, holds them in his fingertips and writes as fast as he can in the air, just trying for DEAN at first and then trying to write CAS and then SHIT and HELL and DAMN because he is an adult. Cas just holds them and waves them back and forth and his eyes shine them back like mirrors, like the surface of the lake. Later Cas takes him to bed, peels all their clothes off. They fall asleep together in a pile and Dean forgets, Dean doesn't think about what Cas said at all. Cas is a human furnace at his back, his mouth damp against Dean's spine and his fingers twitching in his sleep. Dean doesn't think about anything else.

He doesn't remember until they're eating dinner with Sam three nights later, sitting around the kitchen table splitting a pizza with a whole-wheat crust, because Dean was outvoted, and talking about maybe taking a big camping trip again next fall.

"What about the Shenandoah Valley?" Sam says. He's thumbing through a trail map on his phone. "Lots of waterfalls. And there's some caverns around. Jess went to Luray when she was a kid, she talks about it all the time."

"I'm up for it," Dean says. "Virginia's got barbecue joints."

"It would make a good honeymoon," Cas says, and both Dean and Sam stare at him like cartoon characters, frozen in place with pizza slices halfway up to their mouths, eyes giant and rigid like plates. 

"Uh," Sam says. He looks at Dean, and then back to Cas. "Did Jess- did-"

"I meant for us," Cas says, and smiles a totally normal smile at Dean. There is a brief silence, and then Sam's head goes around very very slowly, like he is concerned that there is a wild animal in Dean's kitchen chair, and he doesn't want to startle it. Dean holds onto his pizza. The pepperoni is starting to slide down the end of the slice, greasily. Dean does not exactly know what to do.

"Oh my God," Sam says. His face breaks out into cartwheels. "Oh my God, Dean!"

"Um," says Dean.

"Um?" says Cas. Dean thinks quickly and then crams the pizza slice into his mouth. Cas is staring at him with a funny expression, not funny ha-ha, but the other kind. His eyes widen. "Oh. You didn't-"

"I'm sorry," Sam says. "Am I not supposed to- it's okay, don't worry, forget I said anything, it can be a surprise." He's almost literally glowing, obviously exerting a tremendous amount of energy not to put both hands in the air like he's riding a rollercoaster. "Man," he says. "Man, oh man!" He gets up and paces to the refrigerator and gets out a can of sparkling seltzer and then puts it back and takes it out again, shaking his head and grinning. Meanwhile, Cas is still staring at Dean. Dean chews as slowly as possible. If he really tries, maybe he could keep chewing this one slice of pizza all night, or forever. Stranger things have happened. "It's gonna be so hard not to tell Jess," Sam says. 

"Mmf," says Dean.

 

 

 

 

The pizza isn't magic, so after dinner Dean makes up a terrible excuse about wanting fresh air, hoping that Cas will follow him out, so that they can actually talk without Sam overhearing, But horrifyingly, Sam follows them out too, talking about what a wonderful night it is, sitting on the porch rail and shooting them pleased looks. After a while, probably overcome with feelings, Sam retreats from the porch: now even from the front of the house Dean can hear him singing a fucking Smash Mouth song at the top of his lungs while he does the dishes. Dean wants to go upstairs and bury his head under his pillow but instead he heads for Cas's Jeep. Cas's keys are still in his pocket from earlier.

"You want to drive somewhere?" he asks. "Get ice cream?" Cas puts a hand on Dean's arm, gently, to stop him from unlocking the car. Dean holds his keys in one hand and looks at the rubber seals on the driver's side window. They could stand to be replaced, they're cracking a little. Cas doesn't take especially good care of this car. Who would? It's a shitmobile. It barely deserves to live. One day, hopefully soon, Dean is gonna take it behind the woodshed. Dean thinks about rubber seals really hard and doesn't look at Castiel.

"Dean," says Cas.

"I'm sorry."

"Dean, don't be sorry," Cas says. "Please, look at me." Dean does it, because he can't not. "I should be sorry. You thought I was kidding."

"It's okay," Dean says. "Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it?"

"I was being nice to you," Dean says. "You were feeling like crap, I get it. It's okay." Cas stares at him. "What?"

"You think I-" he starts, and his eyes narrow down. "I mean the things I say, Dean."

"I know, I just- I thought you, whatever, I don't think anything," Dean says, helplessly. He jingles his keys and unlocks the car door. Cas doesn't move. "I said it's okay." But Cas doesn't get into the car, Cas squares his shoulders and then gets down on one knee, plants his jeans into the dirt and stares up at Dean defiantly, immovable, looking impossibly like a complete fucking dork and a fairy tale prince at the same time. Dean gapes at him. "You were serious."

"I am serious," Cas says. "Do you not want to get married? Just tell me. I don't need it."

"No, I do, I- fuck," Dean says. "I don't know."

"Then- not me?" Cas asks, and Dean must make this horrified face, like Cas is saying the most offensive shit he's ever heard, because Cas says "Okay, whew," but then he looks at Dean harder and his smiles slides down a little and his eyes go soft and sad. "Oh, Dean."

"Forget it," Dean says, humiliated. "Don't."

"Why wouldn't I want to marry you?" Cas says. 

"Cas, for real-"

"Why on earth?" Cas asks, genuinely bewildered, and Dean just says,

"Because I'm," and then he stops and puts one hand over his face and breathes through his mouth in big lungfuls, tries not to feel dizzy. He doesn't know what the fuck he would say, what he even means. There's nothing wrong with him: that's the logical, rational part of Dean's brain that knows Dean owns a house and has a job and pays his taxes and cooks a mean pork shoulder and reciprocates enthusiastically. Like, Dean owns a mirror, Dean has looked into it. Dean is a catch on paper. But off paper, off in the wilds, in the fields, in the woods, where Dean sometimes is, where Dean's mind sometimes wanders. Less and less these days, thankfully. But not never. It's one thing to love somebody and to pray with all your might to keep them, silent, through the night. It's another thing to tie them to you, to ask them out loud: stay. Stay, stay. He doesn't have much experience with _stay_. He really wishes he could just say that, could just explain himself, but nothing seems to come out. Cas stands up and comes closer and then he puts his arms around Dean, carefully, waits for Dean to sigh and lean against him and then Cas's arms go tight, secure around him, like a coiled vine that grew into just this shape. Dean really likes those arms. They always seem to know where they're needed.

"Nobody's perfect," Cas says, after a minute. "I have that yellow shirt." Dean huffs a laugh against him. Cas's hand is tucked around Dean's arm, fingers warm in Dean's armpit. "But you're everything to me."

"You too," Dean says. It sounds so pathetic coming out of him. "To me." He squeezes his eyes shut for a second. Sucks it the fuck up. "You have to know that I love you. That I, I always want you, I always want to be- with you," Dean says, in one breath. Cas presses a kiss to his cheek.

"I know," he says.

"So, um," Dean says. They break apart a little and he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. "Are we, you really want to?"

"I really do."

And that's that.

 

 

 

 

Sam waits a barely respectable ten and a half hours before telling Jess: at eight-thirty in the morning Dean wakes up to his ringtone blaring and then a voicemail that is mostly happy shouting. Dean texts her back a bunch of smiley faces and goes to work; he spends all morning sitting at his desk debating whether or not to tell Bobby, with a stomach full of chattering butterflies. This is real, this is happening. He's got to take hold of himself. On his break Dean takes a deep breath and slides into Bobby's office and mentions casually that he's engaged, does Bobby need him to pick up anything from Staples? Bobby's not the most demonstrative guy, but instead of clapping Dean on the shoulder and saying good luck and telling him to pick up the cartons of printer paper they have on order, Bobby drapes himself across Dean like a grease-stained bearskin rug and makes mysteriously emotional noises into Dean's shoulder about how Dean's a good boy and a good man and Dean, goddamnit, life is short and you gotta know what's really important, did Bobby ever tell him about when he and Karen were just starting out? Dean pretends not to enjoy it.

Sam and Jess and Bobby take them out to dinner on Friday, to the nicer bar in town, the one that has a fish fry. They eat mac salad and fried haddock and Dean drinks too many beers and spends half the night staring across the table at Castiel, at a smear of tartar sauce he's got on one knuckle that he keeps missing with the napkin, at the way his hair is starting to fall into his eyes, the way he laughs and drinks out of Dean's water glass, at everything he is. Cas sees him looking and nudges his foot under the table and smiles at him. And then he stands up. Sam and Jess and Bobby and Dean all pause and watch him. A couple of people at the next table over give them weird looks, but the bar's half-empty at this hour anyway, and Dean's way past give a fuck o'clock.

"A toast," Cas says. They dutifully raise their glasses. "In gratitude, to my family," Cas says. "Who taught me how to be unhappy." Nobody says anything. Cas looks down at Dean. "So that when I found happiness, I would recognize it."

"A-fuckin'-men," says Bobby, with feeling. Cas grins at him and downs his beer and they spend the rest of the night getting tanked and making fun of Dean's wedding ideas. "What the fuck is gingham?" Bobby asks.

"It's that picnic table stuff, you know, the checkered red and white- I don't why I bother," Dean says, and flicks a piece of mashed-up french fry at him. Jess is busy pulling up reception sites on her phone.

"Dean, look," she says, and turns the screen towards him. "This one's got a pond." Sam looks thoughtful.

"Why not rent a tent and have it on the, uh-"

"The honey farm," Dean says. Sam cracks up a little. "Sure, yuck it up. Nobody's gonna be laughing when that stuff's in Martha Stewart Living as a must-buy."

"Not a bad idea," Cas says.

"The tent or the Martha Stewart thing?"

"Both," says Cas.

"You're starting to sound like a capitalist," Dean says. "I'm gonna get you a monocle and a burlap bag with a dollar sign on it."

"I'm a small business owner," Cas says. "Pillar of small-town America."

"Jesus Christ," says Bobby. "Get a room."

 

 

 

 

In bed at night- in Dean's bed, the real bed, as much as he loves the quiet of the trailer it doesn't hold a fucking candle to the lumbar support of Dean's actual mattress- they lie awake for a long time talking.

"It wasn't all bad," Cas says. His head is pillowed on Dean's shoulder, and he's drawing patterns on Dean's stomach, lightly, with one hand. "I know they tried to love me. They wanted to love me." Dean doesn't say anything. He presses his cheek against the top of Cas's head. "I spent so many years angry with them, with him, and now. It's not that I have regrets. I don't wish that I had crawled back, or tried to patch things up. I didn't want to, I still don't want to. But it's strange." Cas sighs. "To be done with something. For it to be over."

"Yeah," Dean says.

"I'm sorry," Cas says, "if this dredges up bad memories."

"Nah," Dean says. "Talk. I'm listening."

Cas tells him a story about church camp, getting piled into a van with his brothers, singing hymns all the way to Little Rock, and his dad burning the beans at dinner, everybody making jokes about plagues because there were so many frogs everywhere they tried to set up tents, just a gazillion tiny frogs that wouldn't shut the fuck up all night. Somewhere at the end he falls asleep and snores a little on Dean's shoulder and Dean lets him, rolls him onto his side eventually and curls up behind him, trying to follow him into dreams that don't quite come.

Dean sleeps late and Cas wakes him up by bringing toast into the bed, a slice of Sam's gross chunky flaxseed crap. Cas eats it and drops crumbs and Dean freaks out and calls him a violator of bed purity right up until Cas promises to go get him a cheese danish from Milly's.

"Maybe two," Cas says.

"Marry me," Dean says, grinning, and Cas leans down and kisses him breathless, tasting like butter.

"I'll think about it," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> "Have you found honey? Eat only what you need." -Proverbs 25:16


End file.
